In the article, it said "What we do know is that the new owner hired a British yacht
delivery company to deliver the boat from South Africa to Washington for the Seattle Boat Show
in January. They stopped in San Francisco and left again on December 8. That was the last
anyone heard from the crew". How long would it take to get to Seattle from San Francisco?
I would think that they would have time to wait out the storm before pushing on to Seattle.

There are two ways to make the trip, head out to sea about a 100 miles
where the waves are not piled up so much, or stick along the coast so
you can jump into a harbor if the weather turns nasty. It took me over
three weeks to hug the coast when I was heading south from Seattle to
San Diego. Twice I got stuck in a harbor, when the coast guard would
close the entrance and not allow any boats in or out because of waves
breaking on the bar.

This groups challenge was that they were headed against the wind and
the general direction of the swell. That makes for a tough trip on a
good day, but when the wind is blowing 90 and the seas are 40 feet, I'm
not sure how you are making any progress in a controlled fashion.

The fact that the delivery comany was a "British" group may imply that
they were not aware of the challenge with the harbors being closed when
the waves pickup. It is also possible, but not probable, that the were
not aware how the NOAA weather service works and that you need to
change chanels about every 30 miles or so and thus would have thought
they were out of range and could not get weather info.